Keep Staring
by TheNextFolchart
Summary: He meets Tonks on the first day of school, and after that he's done for.


**Keep Staring**

* * *

He meets Tonks on the first day of school, and after that he's done for.

Because she's got these eyes that just _glow _no matter what color she makes them, and she's the only girl in Care of Magical Creatires Club who who isn't afraid to touch a kneazle, and she wants to be an auror when she grows up even though she knows it's the most dangerous profession there is. The other students don't seem to notice her the way Charlie does; none of them are staring, and Charlie most definitely is.

"What are you looking at?" she asks him when she catches him during Charms, and her tone is equal parts rudeness and curiosity.

"Nothing," he says, but he feels himself turning red.

She doesn't buy it, he can tell, but she turns back to Flitwick and leans down to take a note on the technique behind Wingardium Leviosa.

(Charlie already knows how to do that spell - he made Bill explain it to him a year ago and practiced in secret over summer - so he lets his eyes slide back to Tonks.)

"Swish and flick," Flitwick is saying. Tonks pushes her hair off her face, and the places where her fingertips make contact shimmer back and forth between blonde and blue, and he's _mesmerized_. . . .

"Weasley," she hisses without turning around. "You're staring again."

"Am not," he lies, bending over his blank parchment and scrawling a few notes in case she turns around.

She makes a disapproving noise in her throat and, in unison with the rest of the class, puts down her quill. "Partners?" she asks, finally turning around to look at him, and he shrugs as if he doesn't care and pulls his grubby wand out of his pocket.

"_Wingardium leviosa,_" he says, pointing his wand at the fluffy white feather on the desk. The rest of the class falls silent as he guides the feather up into the air and then gently brings it back to the table. "Impressed?" he asks Tonks, whose glowing eyes have gone wide.

She smirks. "You weren't listening, were you," she says, taking his feather and running it between her fingers.

"What do you mean? I did it perfectly."

One lock of hair shifts to match the brown of her eyes. "We weren't supposed to try the spell yet," she says. "Just practice the incantation."

"Oh."

"Weasley!" Flitwick calls from his stack of books at the front of the classroom. "Was that your feather?"

He swallows. "Yes, sir."

Tonks is smirking. "Maybe next time you should pay attention to _Charms_, instead of staring at pretty girls all day," she says.

"I wasn't - "

"Very good," Flitwick chirps, and now it's Charlie's turn to smirk. "Ten points to Gryffindor for excellent spellmanship!"

Tonks turns the tiniest shade of pink.

* * *

"I don't understand," Charlie says to her on their walk from Care of Magical Creatures Club to Charms - and it's the fourth week of classes, she's forgiven him for staring and he's forgiven her for smirking and he's still done for, because she's _funny_, she's got lightning wit and rapid comebacks and she can't pick up on sarcasm but she's a hell of a mimic. "Does it hurt?"

"What, falling from Heaven?" Tonks asks with an eye-roll, and Charlie decides maybe she isn't half bad at sarcasm after all.

"Changing," he says. "You screw up your face before you change, as if it's painful, but sometimes I see you - " He cuts himself off.

"See me what?"

"Sometimes you change and it's as if you don't even notice. It's effortless."

She raises her eyebrows as they veer off into the classroom. "Like when?"

He's blushing, he knows it, and he sits down in his usual seat and makes himself busy with his bag. "The first day of Charms," he says, avoiding her eyes. "Your hair kept turning blue where you touched it."

"So you _were _staring at me. You liar."

He shrugs.

"It doesn't hurt," she says after a moment. "I do the face because - I don't know why. To make people look, I guess."

_So I'm not the only liar_, he wants to say, but he doesn't.

"I just want them to see me," she adds, but it's quiet, and Charlie has a feeling she isn't talking to him anymore.

"I see you," he says.

Flitwick climbs up on his stack of books and begins the lesson, and Tonks, after a brief second of hesitation, takes the empty chair next to Charlie's.

"Today we will continue our study of Lumos," the professor begins, but then Tonks starts playing with the shape of her nose, and Charlie is lost all over again.

* * *

"Your first important exam will be Thursday," Professor Flitwick says, and it's the eighth week of classes and Charlie's _still _done for because he can't get this girl out of his head, she's everywhere and everything and it isn't as if he loves her (because he _doesn't_), but he feels a little empty when she isn't sitting right next to him.

(The only time she's next to him is during Charms, so that's the only class Charlie cares about.)

". . . will cover Levitation, Wand-Lighting, and Fire-Making Charms. . . ."

She nudges his foot. "You're staring at me."

He nudges back. "You love it," because she _told _him she loves it, she told him she wants to be noticed, and he doesn't understand why she won't admit it.

She lets out a snort - and then shifts her nose into a pig's snout. "Clearly _you _love it."

"Clearly I do," he says.

She turns in her seat to look at him. "Why?" she asks. There is genuine confusion (and maybe some hope) in her eyes.

(Her eyes glow, and he gladly falls into them.)

"I dunno."

"Is it just because I'm a metamorphagus?" she asks. The words tumble out of her mouth so quickly he barely catches them; it's a question she's been dying to ask but terrified to hear him answer. "Because that's why everyone else - "

"No."

She blinks. "No?"

"No."

"...will be worth thirty percent of your grade in this class," Flitwick says, but Charlie isn't listening, he's got his ears tuned in to a difference frequency, because this class is Charms but this girl beside him is _charming, _and he doesn't know how to turn away from her.

"Then why?" she whispers.

"It's something in your eyes. They've got passion behind them."

"Passion?" she repeats. "Passion for what?"

He shrugs. "For everything. For becoming an auror. For learning magic. For getting up and going to breakfast, even. You just look like the kind of person who appreciates life."

She's silent. Then: "So it's not because I changed my hair on the first day of Charms?"

He shakes his head.

"Oh." And she's smiling, he can hear it in her voice. "If that's the case."

"If that's the case, what?"

"Keep staring." And she tosses him a smirk and leans over to take some notes.

(He might be imagining the pink in her cheeks.)

"...see you all on Thursday for the exam!" Flitwick finishes, and Tonks and Charlie begin to pack up their bags.

"For the record, Weasley," she says as they exit the classroom and part ways for their next classes, "you look like the kind of person with a passion for life, too."

He laughs. "Really?"

She nods (he's _definitely not _imagining the pink in her cheeks) and hugs her bag to her chest. "I'll see you at lunch," she says, and she walks down toward Transfiguration.

"See you," he calls, and then he grins all the way out to the greenhouse.

(He's done for.)

* * *

_Quidditch League_

_Position: Keeper_

_Word Count: 1,269_

_Prompt: Charlie Weasley in a school situation._

_Last Man Standing Competition: Could Be Canon_

_One of Every Letter: K_


End file.
